BIH Clinical Fellows

1. Funding objectives

BIH Clinical Fellows are experienced senior physicians (Oberärzte) who demonstrate particularly strong performance in patient care. With this funding program, Stiftung Charité supports BIH Clinical Fellows to conduct projects which are inspired by their clinical engagement and generate added value for their individual medical activities as senior physicians. The fellowship aims at providing these clinicians protected time that does not exist in the day-to-day provision of patient care and cannot be realized by usual third party funding. The following types of projects are generally worthy of being supported:

knowledge acquisition / one’s own further education (e.g. attendance of specialized scientific or clinical further education programs, systematic participation in academic events or training on the job measures),

knowledge exchange with other university medicine locations or relevant actors in Germany and abroad (e.g. sitting in on lectures or knowledge transfer projects),

knowledge transfer (e.g. university courses and lectures or new education formats, information events for the wider public, innovative dissemination projects provided that they exceed the conventional publication of scientific results), and

academic projects as long as they are strongly application-oriented and accompanied by above mentioned measures of knowledge acquisition, knowledge exchange, or knowledge transfer.

Pure research projects, including clinical trials and pilot studies, will not be funded. However, projects that solely focus on either knowledge acquisition, knowledge exchange, or knowledge transfer are actively promoted.

Overall, the BIH Clinical Fellows program is aimed at strengthening the Berlin Institute of Health (BIH) and its guiding notion of translational systems medicine. In particular, in addition to individuals and projects demonstrating strong research performance, the top performers in patient care, who are of equal importance to translation, are to be supported. Here, senior physicians play a key role. But except for the usual third party-based and research oriented instruments, no funding programs exist that are tailored to their special requirements.

2. Funding volume

A BIH Clinical Fellow receives funding totaling up to 75,000 Euro for an overall period of up to 36 months.

While they are being funded, the fellows may use the title “BIH Clinical Fellow”.

3. Application of funds

Funding can be provided for personnel as well as for material and equipment. Personnel funding should be at least partly used to finance clinical personnel as a substitute while the fellow is on leave for the academic project, e.g. by providing an acting senior physician (Funktionsoberarzt) as a (temporary) substitute at the clinic. Furthermore, taking on of scientific and technical personnel can be financed with it for the running of the project.

Funding of a BIH Clinical Fellow by Stiftung Charité is carried out in the form of an approval addressed to BIH or Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin (Charité) to be forwarded to the BIH Clinical Fellow; Charité remains the employer of the scientists paid with the Stiftung Charité funds and is in charge of the funds approved. No contractual relations exist between Stiftung Charité and the BIH Clinical Fellow.

4. Eligibility requirements

have performed this function for at least five years and at least one year with a position as senior physician and not only as a substitute or an acting senior physician, and

are currently focusing predominantly on tasks in patient care and who are not already permanently or largely on leave from patient care for scientific activities either by agrees with Charité or by external funding.

The head of the clinic in which the applicant is active has to support the application and commit to guarantee the (temporary) substitution of the fellow as requested in her or his application in case that it will be funded.

5. Application and assessment criteria

The proposal consists of

details of the applicant’s own clinical and academic qualifications and experience (incl. CV and list of publications),

a description of the applicant’s own area of responsibilities as a physician at the respective clinic and her or his own focal areas in patient care during the last five years, and

a description of the project with special reference to her or his added value to the activities of a physician in the respective individual context of care.

In assessing the proposal, particular importance is attached to the clinical achievements of the applicant as well as the added value for medical activities that her or his project is expected to provide. While academic qualifications and experience are to be considered, the applicant’s success in the context of the usual competition for third-party funding during the last few years is not relevant.

The proposal is drawn up using the proposal forms provided by Stiftung Charité. By submitting this application I confirm that I took note of data protection information (Datenschutzhinweise) of Stiftung Charité.

6. Selection procedure

The proposal is submitted to Stiftung Charité. A statement is obtained from the BIH’s Chair of Board of Directors as well as from the Charité’s Medical Director. Stiftung Charité subsequently conducts a review procedure. Usually, a selection committee with experienced clinicians gives funding recommendations. The final funding decision is taken by the Academic Advisory Council appointed for the Private Excellence Initiative Johanna Quandt.